At
the center of our solar system is a magnetic variable star, our Sun, that
drives the space environment of the planets, including the Earth, and sculpts
the flows of in-terplanetary space itself. At the dawn of the space age, the
earliest experiments discovered this link between the Sun and the Earth:
Explorer 1 (1958—radiation belts), Mariner 2 (1962—solar wind) and Skylab
(1973—coronal mass ejections and coronal holes as the source of solar wind).
This led to the understanding that stars interact with the universe not just
through gravity and photon radiation but also through electromagnetic fields
and particles.
Our
planet is immersed in a seemingly invisible yet exotic and inherently hostile
environment. Above the protective cocoon of Earth’s atmosphere is a plasma soup
com-posed of electrified and magnetized matter entwined with penetrating
radiation and energetic particles. Our Sun’s energy output, which varies on
time scales from milliseconds to billions of years, forms an immense structure
of complex magnetic fields. Inflated by the so-lar wind, this colossal bubble
of magnetism, known as the heliosphere, stretches far beyond the orbit of
Pluto. This extended atmosphere of the Sun drives some of the greatest changes
in our local space environment—affecting our magnetosphere, ionosphere,
atmosphere, and potentially our climate.
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